


As Kingfishers Catch Fire

by Tammany



Series: Easter Daffodils [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, MILD - Freeform, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-13
Packaged: 2018-02-21 00:03:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2447969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This one may be the concluding story of the set. I'm not sure, but I think it's reached its proper concluding point--which is a bit of a relief as I had really intended this to just be a one-shot before turning back to finish "Time and Memory." It kind of ran away with me.</p><p>The title is from Gerard Manley Hopkins' "As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame." I'm not going to do a major literary lesson, but the central thesis is that we are what our lives most embody. There are all sorts of elements of that worked through this story, which was deeply influenced by Beccab's comment on "Continuous as the Stars That Shine" that helped me focus on what I wanted to say about Romanticism and modern Neo-romanticism, and about the integration of man and the urban. The Romantics saw mankind and our works as cut off from nature--I think of us as part of nature, expressing ourselves and our true nature in our art, our cities, and our relationships, among other things. This was about all of those things. For influencing material, check the links at the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Kingfishers Catch Fire

The Houses of Parliament were burning. Flames rose, a rage of destruction, brilliant against a darkening sky. The fire burned so bright the light glowed off the stonework of Westminster Bridge, turning the supporting pillars rose-gold and translucent orange. The smoke rose up, a dark column of destruction.

The two men turned slowly, eyes taking in the devastation. No matter where they looked, the fire dominated everything.

The houses of lords and commons were burning—burning endlessly, infinitely, eternally, the vision repeated over and over and over.

“Cooo,” Lestrade said, voice blown with awe. “Cooo. Sonofabitch could paint, couldn’t he?”

Mycroft nodded as he took in the exhibits on display.  “Turner is amazing,” he said. “And no matter how much I may delight in his pastoral landscapes and his utopian fantasies, I think I love his cityscapes and his moral outrages best of all. He is rare among the Romantics in treating cities as naturalistically and romantically as less urban venues. He was city born and bred, and I think he saw cities as being as natural to us as wilderness. More natural: the city as the human soul.”

Lestrade shot him an amused glance, eyes flirting sideways in a knowing look. “Yeah, ok. You mean the bastard wasn’t just pretty, yeah? Had a moral dimension, and you see it in this stuff.”

“Stuff?” Mycroft sniffed. “The Tate has assembled the full collection of Turner’s paintings and sketches of the fire in the Houses of Parliament, and you call it ‘stuff’? They’ve got the [Cleveland and Philadelphia oils](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burning_of_the_Houses_of_Lords_and_Commons) on loan, for the love of God. ‘Stuff.’” He glowered at the other man, then allowed a small grin to take possession of the corners of his mouth. “Though your central restating of my thesis is admirable. These works have a moral dimension—and a grandeur—his _pastorales_ lack.”

Lestrade quirked a grin back at him—bright, boyish, deceptively simple in affect. He looked back at the array the Tate had drawn together and brilliantly displayed, and said, “Yeah. Ok. The sonofabitch could _paint_ , though. Really paint. Look’it it.” He stepped forward to stand in front of the Philadelphia oil. He raised one hand and hovered it over the painting—several feet back, but the gesture still caused the museum guard and the docent patrolling the room to stir restlessly. “It’s like a dream,” he said. “You look and it’s just paint—blobs and splotches and squiggles and squashed up bits. Nothing there but a mess—and then you look again and it’s all real as could be, innit?”

“He was a Romantic, not a neoclassicist,” Mycroft pointed out, dryly. “And among the first true moderns, as well—it’s not that surprising he used the medium to finesse the message. It’s all about the paint, for him. How the paint makes an image that reflect reality while still being paint.”

“Yeah, that,” Lestrade said, hand still hovering, eyes still searching the painting. After a moment he said, “Our worst nightmare, this, yeah? Remember that bomb Sherlock worked out when he came back? Moran’s tube carriage? It went off, this is what we’d have been dealing with.”

“Yes.”

“You ever think about that? Dream about it?”

“Nightmares.” The words were dry and whispered like blown sand in the empty, bright room. “You?”

“Fuck me, yeah.” Lestrade shuddered, and turned away from the painting, then, looking at Mycroft, not the blaze of destruction hung on the surrounding walls. “Yeah. And fret about it every damned day. Speaking of which, we’re supposed to be doing a working lunch as well as getting a spot of culture in. I could murder a bit of beef.”

Mycroft smiled. “Then it’s as well I reserved us a place at the Rex Whistler,” he said, turning to drift toward the exit. Lestrade fell into place at his elbow, as he’d known he would. “I think their [menu ](http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/42067)will please you.”

Lestrade laughed under his breath, and Mycroft smiled to himself. He was learning to enjoy the other man’s amusement at Mycroft’s knowledge and tendency to “overthink” everything.

“There’s prime rib,” he said to Lestrade, justifying his choice.

“Yeah, I am sure there is,” Lestrade chuckled.

“And the wine list is superb.”

“Like I’m not just as happy wi’ beer or soda?”

“Well if you want we can go do fish and chips,” Mycroft grumbled.

“Stroppy as your brother, you are. “ But Lestrade’s voice was amused and fond, not annoyed and frustrated. “Silly gits, both of you. Got to have the upper hand in everything.”

“Well, I _am_ the British Government,” Mycroft said, “At least according to Sherlock. You certainly wouldn’t want the British Government to back-foot relatively trivial choices like the lunch menu, would you? What kind of confidence would that inspire?”

At that Lestrade laughed outright, and said, “Yeah—look at us. The British Government and Scotland Yard—that’s what Sherlock calls us. Like we are what we do.”

“Well, we are,” Mycroft said, as they slipped through the rotunda and across the way toward the Rex Whistler. “’ _I say more: a just man justices; keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is._ ’ Whitman may sing the body electric, but I sing mine 'Albion'.” He glanced at Lestrade and said with amusement, “And you sing yours ‘Scotland Yard,’ DCI Lestrade, you devastating gumshoe, you. Even when you’re playing MI5, you’re a copper through and through.”

There were narcissus in a vase at the reception station going in. _Narcissus poeticus_ —pheasant’s eye narcissus. Mycroft smiled and leaned over the vase, smelling the rich daffodil scent, but didn’t linger as the host ushered them to their table.

Lestrade grinned, looking around. “They give you the good spot, yeah?” as they settled at their places at a small table under one of the arched windows, at the corner end of the wall. The restaurant managers appeared to have gone to some effort to isolate the table, losing possible space to ensure no one encroached too close. “Got to be losing a couple hundred pounds or more profit giving you your space.”

“It’s good to be the British Government,” Mycroft said, as he snapped open his napkin. “Now, tell me, what does Scotland Yard consider to be the primary issues in their anti-terrorist program, DCI Lestrade?”

“Scotland Yard thinks I’m a Homicide and Serious Crimes investigator—“

“Chief Investigator—“

“Fine, fine, Chief Investigator,” Lestrade said. “But, keeping that in mind—I’m playing outside my own specialty, in Counter Terrorism’s sandbox—Scotland Yard thinks one of our biggest challenges isn’t on the street, it’s maintaining information flow between the Met, MI5, and MI6. Too damn’ often SIS leaves us plodders in the dark, wi’ no notion what we can do to help because they won’t give us a bloody hint.”

Mycroft smiled his very best “dazzling diplomat” smile, and said, “Which is precisely why we’re here, DCI Lestrade,” and the next forty minutes were divided between good food, good drink, and perfectly understandable professional exchanges between two respectable and innocuous minor officials working in their proper roles as protectors of the peace.

They’d been respectable and innocuous and proper for three weeks. Three complicated, confusing, frustrating weeks, in which they’d met often—always in public, always within the limits of two men bound by a professional association and a shared concern for Sherlock Holmes. Mycroft wanted to move forward—and for the life of him, even given his genius, he wasn’t sure how.

Invite Greg back to his, some evening? No, no…the bedroom would loom too obviously, and failure to head for the bedroom would deteriorate into uneasy small talk as they both ignored the unresolved question of sex, and the uneasiness of relationship. The thought of spending an hour with Greg discussing the general malaise of musical theater in London and the catastrophic effect of recycling Disney animations onto the stage made Mycroft’s skin crawl.

Lestrade’s place? But—Greg was the one having to work out how to navigate the voyage from being a bisexual who was functionally het to a bisexual who was functionally gay. Forcing him to make that pilgrimage while playing host and unable to flee the scene felt unkind. And in any case, it wasn’t fundamentally that different from an evening at Mycroft's: looming bedroom, increasingly vapid small-talk, with only the possible diversion of having to watch sport and comment on the offside rule with at least some indication of understanding…

Mycroft had looked up the offside rule, and understood it quite well: he was good at processing information. What he still didn’t entirely fathom and doubted he could feign was giving a damn about it.

And where else did two men of their age and dignity go to practice their snogging and safely inch their way toward the possibility of more? Clubs? Mycroft, thinking of it, shuddered, even as he quietly took a bite of roast cod.

“Find a bone?” Lestrade asked. “Tell the chef…”

“No, no,” Mycroft said, blushing slightly. “Just thinking it’s been three weeks since Easter.”

Lestrade paused, a fork full of beef rib part-way to his mouth. His eyes darkened. “Yeah,” he said, voice charged with tension. Then, again, “Yeah.”

Mycroft swallowed and forced his attention to return to the cod. “I’ve been trying to think of things we could do together. Places we could go.”

“A date?” Lestrade sounded both amused and perturbed.

Mycroft twitched and looked up reproachfully for a moment. “Good Lord. Please tell me we don’t have to call it that? The last time I went on a ‘date’ it was actually counter espionage with a French attaché, and we were both spying on each other. And neither over the age of twenty-five, I daresay.” He considered, and shuddered again. “A dreadful night was had by all.”

“What did you do?”

Mycroft’s face twisted in distaste. “ _Les clubs,_ ” he said with a perfect French accent. “ _C’etait idiot._ ”

Lestrade almost choked on his beef. “ _Les clubs?_ That mean what I think it means?”

“I suspect it does.” Mycroft closed his eyes, delicately. “There was even a young man in sequins.”

Lestrade laughed. “The things you do for England?”

“Paris in the nineties was a very strange place,” Mycroft said. “A foreign land.”

“Well—yeah.”

“No—I mean really foreign,” Mycroft said. “Alien. I go over now and they’re all fairly sane, though a bit peculiar about keeping lovers publically. But while they may be French, they’re really quite civilized if you give them the chance. Then?” He shook his head and brooded, saying, “I think not.”

“It occur to you that these days you’re meeting fat middle-aged pols and twenty years ago you were meeting hot uni students and young urban singles with not a care in the world beyond next month’s rent?”

“You’re a cruel man,” Mycroft said, and sighed. “I suppose I have rather changed venues, haven’t I?”

“And you thank God nightly for the change.”

“Well, yes.” Mycroft smiled. “I’ll take an evening at the Diogenes over _les clubs_ and DJs any time.”

“What about an evening at the Diogenes? Or if I’m too low-brow for your club, come out pubbing with me?”

Mycroft paused and considered. “Sherlock considers an evening at the Diogenes sufficient grounds for breaking sobriety,” he said, uncertainly. “Granted it’s got a good chef, and the members are past masters at minding their own business: they’ve developed utter apathy into a fine art. And I do keep rooms there…”

“See? Easy. Dinner, a drink or two...”

He didn’t say, “Trot up to your private rooms,” but Mycroft could far too easily imagine it…

“You could join,” he said, thinking. “It gives you freedom and authority you wouldn’t have as my guest.”

Lestrade shook his head. “Out of my price bracket.” As Mycroft looked up, mouth opening, he added, “No, you can’t buy my membership.”

“I bought Sherlock a membership. He may hate the place—that doesn’t mean he hasn’t retreated there a time or two. It’s useful.”

“It’s expensive…and I’m not…”

Mycroft huffed, sullenly. “I assure you, accepting the gift wouldn’t make you a kept man.”

“It would complicate things—personally and professionally. I don’t want to _know_ what MI5 would do if I let the British Government buy my way in to a private club.”

“There is that.” Mycroft sighed. “Very well. As my guest, if we must—and you return the favor with pub nights. Someplace quiet?” he added, too caught up in his own dismay to realize his eyes were pleading.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lestrade said, laughing, “No hoochie-coochie girls, no trucker dives, no open-mic karaoke, no drag nights. Satisfied?”

“You can probably haggle me down a bit.” Mycroft considered calling the waiter back so he could order dessert—and sighed, pushing the thought away.

“Haggle you how? Cootchie-girls? Karaoke?”

Mycroft couldn’t resist. “Truckers can be quite…manly. And I did inherit my Uncle Rudy’s ruby slippers.”

Lestrade shook with ill-contained laughter. “You’re havin’ me on! You? In Dorothy slippers?”

“Well—half teasing. I did inherit them. Uncle Rudy and I got along, rather, though he was straight as an arrow—just loved lace and gold lamé. Oh, and lingerie.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Serious.” Mycroft smiled at him. “Ask Sherlock—though you may want to be armed when you do. Sherlock was far less fond of Uncle Rudy, and vice versa. Well—Sherlock didn’t absolutely have to cut up all Uncle Rudy’s good pre-World War II era queen-sized silk stockings as filtration screens for an experiment. Nor was it precisely tactful to suggest they did better service than worn on Uncle Rudy’s ‘fat, hairy legs.’ It was a fraught relationship, really.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Lestrade said. “We getting afters?”

“Not for me. I’m going to have to put in another half-hour on the treadmill as it stands.”

“I can walk you over to Legoland. Work some of it off that way.”

“Then you’d have to get back to your own offices—entirely the wrong direction. And if you’ve got to nickname the bloody headquarters, I much prefer ‘Babylon-on-the-Thames.'”

“Well, you wouldn’t, wouldn’t you?” Lestrade said, mildly. “As for the distance back? Not a problem. Used to it. Walked a beat back in the day.”

“I’ll have my driver take you back.”

Lestrade grimaced. They paid up, and together headed out through the Millibanks foyer and out onto the pavement walkway, turning to head southwest parallel the course of the Thames, heading for Vauxhall Bridge. As they stepped out smartly, a pigeons flew up around them—grey wings and explosive energy launching in terror at their passage, as though they shouted, “Beware! Albion walks with Scotland Yard, today! Beware!”

“A widgeon of pigeons,” Lestrade said.

“No,” Mycroft corrected him. “A flock or a flight. Not a widgeon.”

“Why not? The plural, like—sort of like a murder of crows. Dumb birds, pigeons.”

“They survive in our cities as ferals,” Mycroft said. “Not so stupid—surviving on our territory, in our natural environment. And you can’t call them widgeons in any case. Widgeons are ducks.”

“Ducks? You sure?”

“Quite. [Ducks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_wigeon). Rather like plump red-headed wood ducks. I think I’ve seen them on the Cam.”

They made good progress, Lestrade’s easy, practiced stride keeping pace with Mycroft’s lope, experience making up for length of leg. Mycroft noticed how people moved aside for them, automatically clearing their path.

“Are we so intimidating?” he asked, pointing it out to Lestrade.

“Normal,” Lestrade said, lazily. “People know. They see. They know who’s top of the food chain. You see it everywhere. Helps to be white, and male, and not too young or too old—but I’ve seen a tiny little East Indian woman clear the walk three feet to either side. That woman had presence! Watched one young blud practically skip to get out of her way.”

Mycroft considered this as they turned and headed southeast, zigging now along the edge of the A202, keeping to the footpath over Vauxhall Bridge. “This is our territory,” he said, not sure how he felt about it. Not that it wasn’t true, in multiple senses of the word. This little patch of city held MI6 on one side of the river, MI5’s Thames House on the other, and what would soon be the former New Scotland Yard just a few blocks further inland.

He laughed, softly, as they headed out over the vast expanse of water, the wind from downriver ruffling his hair. “I daresay we’ve marked our territory on every corner of this part of town,” he said.

“Somehow I can’t see you peeing on fire hydrants,” Lestrade said. His head had come up and his stride had opened further, and now Mycroft found he was having to work to hold his own with the shorter man. “Damn, I forget sometimes what it’s like walking over the bridges. Look at it. Damn—just look! You can see upriver, past Lambeth Bridge, right up to Westminster Bridge…same as we saw just now in the gallery. Right up past the Houses of Parliament to the bridge.” He narrowed his eyes and added, “Not burnin’ today, though. Not on our watch.”

Mycroft admired the fierce, taught expression on Lestrade's face, and the way the wind blew his short-cropped hair. “No,” he agreed, contentedly. “Not on our watch…so far.”

“Aw, you had to go ruin it,” Lestrade said. “I’ll be worrying about bombs and arson all afternoon, now.”

“Someone has to. I’m just as glad if it’s you.”

“And you.”

“Well, yes, but that goes without saying,” Mycroft said, and stepped out again. He squinted at the SIS headquarters on the far side of the river. “Did you know,” he asked, “that we have peregrine falcons nesting over there?”

“Over where?”

“Babylon-on-the-Thames. Headquarters. A pair of peregrines. They’ve set up housekeeping on one of the parapets.”

“Lemme guess—you’ve got a bird-cam set up to watch.”

“And let strangers put surveillance gear on our headquarters? Surely you jest—no, but we did repurpose one of our own surveillance cameras to observe them. The male’s been named James, of course. The female’s M—though she’s popularly called ‘Emma.’”

“Emma Peel, right?”

“Of course right. The last of the eggs hatched out this week. They’re ugly little things. Bare and gawky and disturbingly reminiscent of Sherlock as a child. It’s a wonder the parents haven’t pushed the chicks off the roof already, the way the ungrateful wretches scream.”

“And how much time _do_ you spend watching the nest? Got the feed bookmarked on your laptop?

Well, yes—but I often watch from my window,” Mycroft said. “My office overlooks their scrape, so I just watch them from my office window. Anthea thinks I’m pining.”

Lestrade gave Mycroft a reproachful look to reward Mycroft’s dry humor.  “Pining. Wha’ for?”

“I believe the correct phrasing would be ‘For whom?” And she’s not sure. It’s been quite amusing watching her attempt to deduce the answer. She’s only picked up the scent after the trail’s gone cold.”

“Hmmmm?””

“Not pining any more,” Mycroft said.

Their eyes met.

Lestrade looked away, blushing. “Diogenes tonight, maybe?” he asked. His voice was husky.

Mycroft blinked, raptor-eyed. “Tonight would work,” he said. “We can eat in the dining room, or I can order a meal sent up to my rooms. No talking in the dining room, though—it’s up to you.”

“Dining room, I think,” Lestrade said. “Then…maybe a drink upstairs later?”

Mycroft nodded.

“You’ve been patient,” Lestrade said, abruptly. “Sorry to be making you wait, you know?”

“It is what it is,” Mycroft said. “I’d not be where I am if I couldn’t work with reality—and I’ll take the reality we have, thank you. Shall I have my driver pick you up, or will you find your way over on your own?”

“Find my own way over and back. Worst case it’s just cab fare. Can’t afford it often, but for special—yeah. Is there a dress code?”

“Some of the sniffier members would prefer you wear a dinner jacket and tie,” Mycroft said. “But if you wear the suit you use for court hearings and press conferences you’ll be fine.”

Lestrade nodded. “I can see I’m going to have to upgrade my wardrobe,” he said.

“You’re fine.”

“Yeah, OK.”

Lestrade looked up the river again, his face still. Mycroft, following his gaze, took in the slow, green river, the gulls screaming above, the sturdy ships passing below, and all around, as far as the eye could see--London. Their London.

"She's a beautiful old city, isn't she?" Lestrade asked, his voice surprisingly tender.

"That she is," Mycroft said, as tenderly. "That she is."

They parted ways at the foot of the bridge, Lestrade heading back north with his hands in his pockets and his jacket-hem flapping in the breeze. Mycroft watched him go, thinking how much he looked at home—a human in his environment.

 

“Quite a change from your parents' place,” Lestade said, that evening, standing in the window of the Diogenes looking down on Pall Mall below. “City.”

The stereo system switched songs, and the woodwinds followed by the stalking sax of Gerry Rafferty's "[Baker Street](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsXjCp_f1h4)" slid into the room, supple as a serpent and scorchingly sexy. Mycroft smiled a crooked smile and stilled his hand as he poured them each a snifter of brandy. “Man’s truest home, the city.” 

“You think?”

“We are what we do—we are what we make. Man makes cities. Hundreds of thousands of years he’s out on the veldt, out in the wild, but as soon as humans invent the city, everything changes. It’s like after all those millennia we finally found our own proper environment—our own nature.” He handed Lestrade his drink, and leaned on the opposite side of the window frame, watching the man more than the city around them. “See that flat opposite?” he asked. “There’s a round lamp with an amber shade sitting in front of the window. The light’s like fire light.”

“Yeah. I see it.”

“That’s my flat.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No.”

“You could have had me over there.”

“This is just a bit closer to neutral territory. You can go downstairs, get a drink, sit in any of the lounges.”

“As your guest.”

“For now, yes.”

“Told you—you’re not to go buying me a membership.” Mycroft didn’t answer. Lestrade snorted. “You’re a sneaky bastard,” he said, “but you can’t fool me.”

“I’m not trying to,” Mycroft said.

Lestrade met his eyes and said, thoughtfully, “No. No—you’re not, are you? Cards face-up and nothing up your sleeve. No games—and you the master game player. What’s that about, then?”

“Some things one dare not game. If you don’t treat truth as true—if you don’t respect your own core nature—it’s all lost before you start.”

Lestrade considered, dark eyes firm on Mycroft’s face. He didn’t speak. Mycroft had to work to keep his breath still and his eyes from looking away.

At last Lestrade nodded, and they both looked away, having survived the test of fire. Lestrade ducked down to sip the brandy, and came up again smiling. “Jeeeee-zus, that’s smooth!”

“I don’t buy bad brandy,” Mycroft said. “I occasionally purchase cheap brandy, if I find a good source of something special that hasn’t been spotted by the market yet. But I never buy _bad_ brandy.”

The sun had fallen hours before. The city was ablaze with lights. The sky overhead was a dull, smoke red, the streetlights and all the other city lights blending with the smog and the fog off the river to blot out the sky.

“It’s like the city’s on fire,” Lestrade said.

“Not on our watch,” Mycroft said. Then, cautiously, he said, “May I?” and stepped one step closer.

Lestrade smiled into his brandy glass and said, “Yeah, you silly prat.”

Mycroft slid his arm under Lestrade’s jacket, wrapping around the other man’s waist. “Say if it feels wrong,” he said.

Lestrade nodded, but murmured, “It’s all right. It feels…natural.”

“Tell me if it doesn’t.”

Lestrade turned to him and wrapped the back of Mycroft’s neck with his free hand, pulling him close. “You tell me if it doesn’t,” he said, and leaned in for a kiss, nuzzling, lipping, then softly tracing Mycroft’s lips with his tongue.

“Perfectly natural,” Mycroft murmured, and let his lover in.

 

The End

 

**Nota Bene:**

 

I can't seem to paste links into the end notes, so the links are below:

Not everything listed here made it directly into the story, and not everything in the story is tied to anything else...and the story's tinted with years and years of brilliant works outside this set. These, however, served as dreamcatchers for me, trapping and condensing some of what I was trying to say, and even more some of what I felt. Forgive the two New York pieces of music associated with a story about London, but as a US citizen for whom New York City was, for much of my life, much the Wonderland of my culture, the tenderness of both pieces caught what I wanted to try to convey. I don't think I did, quite--the boys distracted me, as did other themes. But it's there, still--the love of a city, the sense of human ensoulment growing out of cities. 

There is a reason it's called "civilization." It's what humans do in cities--they invent civilization.

 

For what it's worth I couldn't find a really good photo of the view looking north from Vauxhall Bridge. As nearly as I can determine from close consideration of Google Maps Earthview Mycroft and Lestrade should have been able to see Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament in the distance beyond Lambeth Bridge as they walked over the bridge...but I will admit that one trusts even Google Maps Earthview at one's own risk. If that view can't be seen from there, though, it *should* be, and in this fiction it can be. And so there!

 

[Monet’s London](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4LAnwtGM3gU/UV3nINmSVDI/AAAAAAAAJkw/nfDbPcfe2Ls/s400/MonThames.jpg)

[Borisov's Gherkin](http://www.abfile.com/images/paintings/gherkin_swiss_re_building.jpg)

[Turner, Houses of Parliament](http://normsonline.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/roberts_parliament.jpg?w=300&h=176)

[Turner, Burning of the Houses of Parliament](http://www.william-turner.org/Burning-of-the-Houses-of-Parliament.jpg)

[Turner, Rain, Steam, and Speed the Great Western Railway 1844](http://www.william-turner.org/Rain,-Steam-and-Speed-The-Great-Western-Railway--1844.jpg)

[Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173654)

[Audio Recording, As Kingfishers Catch Fire](http://vocaroo.com/i/s1jj9lPD6OS9)

[Musical adaptation: As Kingfishers Catch Fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n589pnwf33o&index=9&list=PLC7C5D754460F9493)

[Wordsworth, Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174783)

[Yeats, The Second Coming](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172062)

[Hopkins, The Windhover](http://www.bartleby.com/122/12.html)

[Gerry Rafferty, Baker Street (long Version)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSIw09oqsYo)

[Billy Joel, New York State of Mind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol0dPJdzm1M)

[Art Garfunkel, Heart of New York](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK81edShkXI)

 


End file.
